I must present some of these evils in detail. I begin with the lowest—the pecuniary loss. We have to estimate the unnecessary deaths, the unnecessary sickness, the number of funerals, the burthens upon every charity, and that upon the poor-rate. _The fever-tax is the heaviest of all taxes_. And yet a much larger sum is annually spent in sustaining a number of palliative expedients, than would suffice to support a machinery of prevention. It is laid upon us, sometimes by the neglect, sometimes by the false economy of local authorities. They have only one object—to keep down the rates. However obvious the improvement, it is met by the question—“How much will it cost?” Short-sighted economy! The question ought to be—“How much suffering and sickness will it prevent?” The largest sum that could by possibility be required to carry out all the needful schemes of sanitary improvement, are far exceeded by the sums now expended in various ways, and which are entailed upon us by the presence of disease, and the poverty it produces. The moral evils far exceed any pecuniary loss, and outweigh any amount of physical suffering. The various epidemic diseases generally attack persons in the vigour of life. This is, especially, the case with typhus, which is, as Dr. Guy terms it, our “pet epidemic,” and which we nurse “with as much care as if we loved it.” How many widows and orphans are thus thrown destitute upon the world? How many thousands of poor children are cast, homeless and friendless, upon the streets, furnishing supplies for that great fund of juvenile depravity of which we have lately heard so much? These wretched children crowd our thoroughfares, miserable and abject. They soon acquire the irregular habits of the class among whom they are thrown. Let the candid mind calculate the cost. How much in poor-rates? how much in alms? how much to public institutions? And then let us ask how many of them become depredators and thieves—punishing society for its neglect—punishing, by preying upon its property—punishing, by spreading abroad the contagion of disease and of vice—and punishing, by the cost of prisons, police, bridewells, penitentiaries, and all the other appliances to repress crime? The reports from some places are of the most painful description, as respects the great number of orphans made by the present visitation of cholera. If this applies to an occasional visit of cholera, it applies with ten-fold force to typhus. I know, at this moment, three different families suffering under this affliction. In two of the cases, the mother is left to struggle with a large family; in the other case, both parents were taken off by fever within a fortnight of each other. The children are in the workhouse.